


Mademoiselle and Miss

by Eglantine



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Child Death, Child Neglect, F/F, Internalized Homophobia, Non-Graphic Rape, like it's just sort of grim i'm sorry, on the other hand: thief girlfriends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-05
Updated: 2018-07-05
Packaged: 2019-06-05 20:57:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15179240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eglantine/pseuds/Eglantine
Summary: Magnon wants a better life. It does not come about the way she expects. // A Bishop Myriel Bail Fund gift for genarti.





	Mademoiselle and Miss

“I hate it,” Magnon said as she surveyed the cart of gleaming, glassy-eyed fish. She pointed to one, and when the fishwife turned away to wrap it, Magnon said again, “I hate it. Nicolette. It’s not my name. It makes me feel like a grisette, nicknamed by some student.”

“I do not know what a grisette is,” Anna said. She was English, and Magnon found her accent funny—the way it halted and blurred in all the wrong places, never quite in a way you could correct—she’d said that early on, to please correct her when she got things wrong—but in a way that just didn’t sound quite right. 

“It’s a—a working girl,” Magnon said. “The kind that runs around with students.”

“Oh,” Anna said. “And that is bad?”

“It’s not what I am,” Magnon said. “It’s what I went into service not to be.” 

“Oh,” Anna said. 

“ _Nicolette_.” Magnon tossed her head. “I hate it.”

“I think it is nice,” Anna said. “It is like—it is like at work, you are Nicolette. You are docile and obedient and the perfect servant, and it is not you, it is Nicolette who does these things. And then you go to bed at night—or you come here, with me—and you are yourself.” 

“But even the tradesmen here call me it now,” Magnon said. “As soon as they learn who I work for.” 

“Oh, tradesmen,” Anna said dismissively. “The people who matter know who you really are. Or perhaps it is that the people who know who you really are are the ones that matter?” 

Magnon had to smile. “That’s very philosophical. Have you been running with students?” 

“Christ, no,” Anna said. She had first learned her French as a scullery maid to a French cook, so her areas of greatest fluency had to do with food and complaining. “I do not run with anyone.”

“I hear the English are prudish about such things,” Magnon said. Fish wrapped and in her basket, it was time to make her way back home, but the day was cool enough to walk slowly without risking the freshness of the fish.

Anna shrugged. “They happen, these things. But if my aim were to keep away from men, I would not become a maid.” 

Magnon cast her a sideways look. “So you’ve…?”

“No,” Anna said. “I always refused. I have found that usually you only need to fight back a little—usually they like to be able to imagine that you really do want it, and if you make it plain enough you do not, they do not wish to continue. And they do not like if there is a fuss, usually—they do not wish attention to be drawn. There are some who do not mind this, of course, but I have been blessed not to encounter them.” 

She was very calm as she said it. She always seemed very calm—bland, almost. There was something about her that just looked English, not that Magnon knew any other Englishwomen. But it was something in the roundness of her face, the set of her blue eyes and how they contrasted with her brown hair. Perhaps it wasn’t actually English, just not-French.

“Blessed,” Magnon said. “Indeed.” 

*

And of course, Magnon knew that sooner or later she would find this out for herself. And sooner or later she did. 

Monsieur Gillenormand, the master of the house, had a grandson who was about ten. He also, she learned one summer, when the grandson was away with his tutor on a trip of several days, had a grandnephew, who was about seventeen. 

“I’m bound for the army,” he said, in a tone that clearly expressed an expectation she would be impressed. Magnon imagined that perhaps the perfect maid Nicolette would indeed be impressed by this, and arranged her face accordingly. This made the young officer-to-be smile and beckon her closer. “Nicolette, is it?” 

The two grandsons had never met, but Magnon thought she would like very much to see them side-by-side: the younger dark-haired and slate-eyed and serious, this one blond and round-faced and cheerful. 

“That is what they call me, monsieur,” she said demurely.

“Please,” he said. “Do call me Théodule.” 

*

“He thinks he’s very subtle,” Magnon said to Anna in the market. 

Anna sighed. “They always do.” 

“I doubt he’s ever actually been with a woman, but he preens himself as if he has,” Magnon said. “And assumes I’ll be very impressed. –hey now!” Her hand is around an unseen wrist before her mind quite catches up to what has happened. She jerks the wrist, the attached arm, the attached boy, around to where she can look at him. “Oh, you.” 

“I thought maybe you’d gotten slow,” the skinny gamin called Montparnasse said, trying to wriggle free of her grasp. Magnon tightened her hand. “Being a domestic now, and all respectable.” 

“No,” Magnon said flatly. “I haven’t. Now get out of here.” 

But Montparnasse’s magpie attention had already wandered to Anna. “Well, say! If it ain’t Mamzelle Miss.” 

Magnon looked to Anna in surprise, but Anna’s face was calm as ever, her blue eyes placid. 

“How do you do—Montparnasse, was it?” 

“How the hell do you know each other?” Magnon asked, looking between them with irritated wonder. 

“Montparnasse kindly ran some errands for me,” Anna said. “Between me and a friend of mine.”

“A friend,” Montparnasse snorted. “Right.” 

He was only eleven or so—as far as Magnon recalled, anyway, given he’d been just a little thing when they first met, scampering around the streets near Les Halles. It had only been a brief few years they’d run those streets together, before the aunt who raised her declared her old enough to find work and fend for herself. Montparnasse was nearing that age now, Magnon thought: an age when passersby saw him not as sweet, but a touch threatening. He’d started carrying himself with a young man’s self-consciousness. But that pretty, girlish face of his, she thought: that would buy him some time. It made him look so innocent. 

The look he was giving Anna was not particularly innocent.

“D’you know why they call me Montparnasse?” he said. 

“Because that’s where a ragpicker found you in a gutter,” Magnon interjected, not liking that look. Montparnasse, annoyed at the disruption to whatever lewd point he’d been building to, shot her a glare. 

“I am actually very glad to see you, Montparnasse,” Anna said, ignoring this exchange entirely. “Will you tell our friend I would like to see him again? Next week, perhaps?” 

“Sure, ‘course,” Montparnasse said, his sullenness at being mocked quickly replaced with smugness at being found useful. “Anything you like.”

“How good of you,” Anna said. “I am afraid we should go now. But you do know how to find me.”

“See you soon, Magnon,” Montparnasse said with a grin, and as he darted into the crowd of the marketplace, Magnon muttered, “I hope not.” 

“Do you not?” Anna said. “An old friend?”

“I’ve left that behind,” Magnon said. “The kind of people he consorts with. I’ve nothing to do with them now. You should take care, too,” she added. “I don’t know what business you have with—or who you have it with, but… they’re not trustworthy people, his friends.”

“How kind of you to warn me,” Anna said. “I will be sure to take care.” 

*

Monsieur Gillenormand brought his nephew to a party, and they returned late at night. Magnon had to wait up with the rest of the servants, to be sure the fires were lit, and in case they were otherwise required. She sat in a chair in a back corridor, swinging her feet and rubbing her eyes to try to stay awake, listening for the sounds of the family going to bed. She must have dozed off for a moment, for suddenly there was Monsieur Gillenormand’s valet standing right in front of her.

“Monsieur Théodule requires your help,” he said. “A lost button on his evening jacket.”

“Can’t that wait ‘til morning?” Magnon asked. But the valet’s look was the only answer she required, and she rose to make her way to Théodule’s room. Fine. A button wouldn’t take long, and then she could go to bed. 

When she got up to the room, there was no evening jacket in sight. Just Théodule in his socks and shirtsleeves, smiling at her.

“Well, Nicolette,” he said. “We’re alone at last.” 

“I’m told you’re having difficulty with a button?” she said.

Théodule laughed and said. “Yes. Here.”

He held out his hand and she took it, uncertain. Then he guided her hand to the button at the front of his trousers. “Start with this one.” 

She thought about what Anna said, about making a fuss, but for some reason she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Because what if he got angry? What if he hit her? She knew what being hit felt like, but she didn’t know what being fucked felt like, and it was easier to be afraid of the thing she knew rather than the thing she didn’t. It seemed, too, like fighting would probably just prolong the whole experience, so she stayed quiet and let him get it over with quickly. She told herself it wasn’t really happening to her. It was Nicolette. 

In the days that followed, she felt disoriented and strange. She went to the market every day, but Anna was never there. Finally, a fishwife told her that she’d heard Anna had left her family’s service. Magnon wondered if that meant she’d gone back to England. The fishwife had no answer for this. Magnon went home. 

Magnon’s relationship to time rearranged itself. The nights felt very long, but the days very short: it would seem no sooner had she waked than the sun was setting, and she had finished nothing she had meant to. She counted missed cycles: one, two, and just after the third she was called in to speak to Monsieur Gillenormand’s steward.

“You have not been yourself,” he said. “Your work has not been what we require. Here is a week’s pay: you may go.” 

Magnon thought she might be sick. After she had collected her things, she went outside and was sick. She thought of telling the gardener, but decided, having been dismissed, it was no longer her concern how the house looked. 

Her feet followed an instinctive path: toward the river, across the river. At that point she felt tired, and sat down near the bank. She wondered if she could live there, what would happen. She imagined the grass growing up around her and knitting itself into a little hut. 

Just before dusk, someone shook her by the shoulder. She looked up blearily to see Montparnasse, holding out her purse.

“You didn’t notice,” he said. “Are you sick?”

“I’ve been dismissed,” she said. “Please—do you know if Anna is still in Paris?” 

“Anna? Oh! Mamzelle Miss!” He laughed. “Oh, is she. Do you want me to take you to her? Only I thought you didn’t want help from the likes of me anymore.” 

“Not now,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment. “Just—not now, alright? Please, just take me where she is? If you can? Will her new master mind?” 

Montparnasse just laughed again. This response didn’t make much sense to Magnon, but then again, over the past few weeks, little had. Montparnasse helped her to her feet and started to lead her east along the river, and then up a street just at the edge of the Marais. A nice enough neighborhood, Magnon thought, and was glad that, whatever had happened, Anna seemed to have found a nice family.

Montparnasse led her to a smallish building and then, not around back or to the side, but up to the front door. This, too, she accepted, although it was strange. A woman let them in—a portress, then, not a valet—and Montparnasse made his way confidently to the rooms on the first floor. And knocked. This, finally, forced Magnon out of her stupor.

“What are you doing, you brazen idiot!” she gasped, seizing Montparnasse by the scruff of his shirt. “You can’t just—”

But there was the door opening, and there was Anna. Her face lit up. “Magnon! Please come in.” 

She stepped aside to let them in. It was a nice set of rooms, tidy and not yet decorated. There didn’t seem to be enough space for anyone else to live there—but the flat was far too large, surely, for Anna to afford. 

“Come on, then,” Montparnasse said. “I don’t help for free.” 

Anna pulled a coin out of her pocket and tossed it to him. He snatched it eagerly out of the air.

“Thank you very much for your help,” she said. “Now let us alone.”

Montparnasse was more than happy to oblige. For her part, Magnon still didn’t understand what was going on. But Anna bustled her into the room, took her bag, took off her coat, steered her over and sat her down on the sofa.

“Do you live here?” Magnon said. 

“Yes,” Anna said. “I’ve just moved in.” 

“But—how?” That word seemed to cover all of Magnon’s questions: how did she afford it? How had she come to leave her old master? How come she was never at the market anymore? But Anna didn’t answer any of them. 

“You do not look well,” Anna said. “What is going on?” 

So Magnon told Anna what had happened. Anna held her hand tight as she told it, and when Magnon started to weep, Anna pulled her close and held her and Magnon buried her face in Anna’s shoulder. As she sobbed and Anna stroked her hair, she felt a little like the salt was burning away the haze that had stood between her and the world. And it did burn—it hurt to not feel hazy, but at least there was Anna’s hand stroking her hair. 

That night, they curled up in the same bed, as Anna only had the one. And for the first time in weeks the night went quickly, with the steady, safe warmth of Anna at her back. 

*

“Tell me how you know Montparnasse,” Magnon said. It had been a week, and it was clear that Anna did not work for anyone these days: she was in every day, looking after Magnon. “How did you come to live here? How do you pay for it?” 

“Through my business with Montparnasse’s friends,” Anna said. 

“And what business is that?” 

Anna paused a moment. Then she said, “I do not want to pull you into anything you do not want to be part of. If you would like to stay here until you are feeling better, I would be very happy to help you find a new position. I could fake a reference for you.” 

“Just tell me, Anna.” 

“Montparnasse found me a fence,” Anna said. “I stole jewelry from my mistress and he helped me sell it.” 

“Oh,” Magnon said. Somehow, she wasn’t as surprised as she felt she probably should be. “So that’s why… you were dismissed?”

“No,” Anna said. “I left before she noticed. That is the trick, you see. To take your time. These rich ladies, they have so much jewelry, there are pieces they never wear. Never notice. It takes them an age to notice that they are gone—if they ever do. At which time, I am gone, too.” 

“So this is what you do,” Magnon said carefully.

“Not only this.” Anna was placid as ever, but there was something different in it now. A matter-of-factness where once she had seemed blank, even a bit dim. That, Magnon realized, had been a front. “I will pass along information about when my family or other families will be away, to those who would take advantage of their absence. I got my start picking pockets, as many do. But I will not sleep with men for jewels or money—that, only, I will not do.” 

“It seems easier,” Magnon pointed out.

“Perhaps,” Anna said. “But at what cost?” 

Magnon, upon further consideration, was inclined to agree. 

“But I do understand,” Anna said. “The desire to live respectably. I understand that. You may forget I said any of this, if you would rather.” 

“It’s alright,” Magnon said. “It was a stupid thought. To imagine I could get away from—from what I was born to. It’s who I am, isn’t it! One of them. I just didn’t…” She looked away, fists clenched in her skirt. “Never mind. It’s stupid.”

Anna came and sat next to her, lay her hand over Magnon’s clenched fist. “Tell me.”

Magnon looked up at her. “I never wanted to be used the way these men use their girls. Tossed from man to man, only ever as safe as your lover or husband is strong. Until you get old and shriveled up and they’re either afraid of you or pity and despise you.” 

“No,” Anna said. She tightened her hand around Magnon’s, and her blue eyes were like stone. “No. That is not what I do. That is not what we will do.” 

*

There was one part of the story Magnon forgot to tell in the moment, she so hated to think of it, and by the time she remembered to say anything, it was too late. 

“It would just as likely kill you, if you tried to get rid of it now,” Anna said. 

But Anna had another plan. 

“We will put to the charge of that boy,” she said. “The boy who did this. Let him find a way to mind it.”

Magnon shook her head. “He’s off for the army—I don’t even know where he is. But I have another idea,” she added suddenly, the thought taking shape even as she spoke. “There is someone else who can answer for it.” 

*

For about a year, the matter was forgotten. Anna had laughed at the brazenness of the plan—foist the child off on a man she’d barely spoken to, who would know perfectly well it wasn’t his!—but Magnon’s intuition had proven correct. That the plan had succeeded was almost as satisfying as Anna’s obvious admiration at the fact that it had. 

They lived together, Magnon keeping the house while Anna went about her work. Magnon found herself growing reacquainted with her aunt’s old crowd: Brujon, Babet, and of course little Montparnasse. She didn’t like it, exactly, the lot of them crowding into her sitting room again. But the difference was, she could tell them to leave—or give Anna a look, and Anna would tell them to leave—whenever she wanted. 

“When I was a girl they’d all just hang around my aunt’s house for hours,” she said. “I hated it. I’d be curled up in the corner trying to sleep, and they’d be laughing and arguing and singing all night.” 

One winter morning, Anna went out to see about a potential mark: an actress who needed a new dresser. 

“I do not think anything will come of it,” Anna said. “Actresses are more careful than women who were born rich. But of course—” She broke suddenly into a dazzling grin. “It would be something if it did.” 

So off Anna went, and not ten minutes later there was a knock at the door, which Magnon assumed must be Anna back to collect something she’d forgotten. But it wasn’t.

It was Théodule. 

Magnon went very still. He immediately rushed forward and embraced her. He was much taller than her—he could, and did, rest his chin on her head.

“I only just found out,” he said. “I went to visit my granduncle and there it was! Lord! Why didn’t you tell me?” 

“I didn’t have any way to find you,” Magnon says. “Besides, it doesn’t matter. It’s really not your concern.”

“Oh,” Théodule said. He looked confused, then relieved. And very young. “Well—if you say so, then. But goodness! Can you think of the shock I had? I didn’t say a word to anyone about it, of course, and that seemed to suit them fine…” 

He stepped back and looked at her, smiling. “I suppose that means you’ve been thinking of me all this time, eh, Nicolette?” 

She wanted to spit at the sound of that name. She wanted to push him away and force him out of her home, as she now had the power to do. But she didn’t. Again, again, she didn’t. 

*

“I should have been here,” Anna said. But he was gone by the time she got home.

“No,” Magnon said. “You had your business. It’s not your fault.” 

In general it seemed easier to just get on with things this time, to keep going about her life. But she could feel Anna watching her, worrying about her. Which she didn’t altogether mind, even if it didn’t seem necessary. She was alright. It was alright. 

It was winter, too, and they were in a brief fallow period, things having not looked promising with the actress. So they curled up in the bed together to keep warm, Anna’s arms around Magnon, Magnon’s head against Anna’s chest. 

Anna said one day, a month or so later, “Have you ever made love to anyone? To anyone but him?”

“No,” Magnon said. 

“That is too bad,” Anna said. “I think you ought to know. How nice it can be. That it can be nice.” 

Magnon curled more closely against her. Anna stroked her hair, and she leaned into it. “I would rather just stay here with you.”

Anna’s hand stilled, just for a moment. Then she said, “Then let me show you.” 

Magnon craned her neck to try and look at her, but it was too hard to do without pulling away entirely, which she didn’t want to do. “What?” 

Anna bent her own head to look Magnon in the eye. “Would you mind if I kissed you?” 

Magnon’s eyes flicked down to Anna’s lips. They were a bit thin, in the realm of all the lips in the world, and the upper lip was fuller than the lower, which did seem to be the opposite of how it was meant to go, now that Magnon thought about it. Maybe that was why Anna’s words came out wrong, Magnon thought, scrunched together and broken apart in such funny ways that made her sound so foreign despite her perfect grammar. 

A long strand of chestnut-colored hair had come free from the loose plait that Anna wore at night. Magnon reached up and placed it carefully behind Anna’s ear. Once her hand was already there, it seemed only natural to cup her cheek, to see how it felt. And once she had done that, it seemed very important to kiss her, too. To know how it felt to kiss someone whose upper lip was fuller than the lower. 

“How was that?” Anna murmured. 

“Nice,” Magnon said. “That was nice.” 

*

Since it worked so well last time, when a second baby made its appearance, they did the same as with the first. This time, however, Monsieur Gillenormand sent them both back, with a promise of 80 francs a month to maintain them. 

They both looked like their father: the same slightly bulgy blue eyes and ever-rosy cheeks that looked like a soft pink stain on the white china of their skin. 

Magnon hated to look at them. They brought in a girl to look after them, which ate up more of the money than Magnon would have liked, but she couldn’t bear to do otherwise. She did not entirely think of them as hers: they were Théodule and Nicolette’s. 

This did not make her like them any better. 

* 

But then they were gone.

*

Of all the thieves with whom Anna associated, Magnon liked Thénardier the least. He and his family had not made one of her aunt’s circle—had not been in Paris yet, then, or perhaps had simply had another group. But he was the center now, the brains of their motley operation. He seemed to take pleasure it Magnon’s discomfort with him, a fact that made her just want to avoid him more.

Instead, events transpired to bring them closer together. 

Magnon kept to the house in the aftermath of their deaths, in a pose that was interpreted—to her relief—as grief when in fact it was simply shame that she felt no grief at all, horror that the only thought in her mind was of the money. They were children, and they had died. And she had, indeed, been sad about it, in the way that it was always sad to think of a short life ended too soon. But she could not muster any stronger feeling than that. 

Was it possible, she wondered, that something was wrong with her—that the same strangeness that made her love Anna better than she had ever loved any man, better than she had ever loved and person in the world, was in fact something colder and more monstrous than she’d ever realized? 

But the fact of the matter was, the timing could hardly have been worse for losing the eighty francs the boys represented. Anna was deep in a tricky and badly-paid job, and couldn’t leave or make a move without upsetting the balance of their plan and setting them back even further. 

“I could find a position,” Magnon said. “Just for a few months. Or ask… ask around for other work.”

“You are no thief,” Anna protested. “I do not want you getting caught and ending up in prison, that will solve nothing.” 

“I could be a thief,” Magnon protested, but Anna just laughed and said, “You have other skills, my love.” 

That afternoon, the wife of Thénardier, one of Anna’s sometimes-associates, stopped by to deliver a message for Magnon to pass along. 

“Well, at least you came through alright,” she said without much interest when told of the fever. “Pity about the children.” 

“You’re too kind,” Magnon said dryly. 

“Well, you hardly seem heartbroken,” Madame Thénardier said. Magnon flushed and braced herself for the wave of disapproval she had feared for so long, but it wasn’t forthcoming. If Madame Thénardier thought it strange or cruel or cold that Magnon was not prostrate with grief, she didn’t let on. 

“It’s been very difficult,” Anna said. “Not least because of the money.” 

Naturally, Madame Thénardier’s ears pricked up at that. “Money?”

“From their—father,” Magnon said. “A rich gentleman I used to serve. He sent us eighty francs a month to see them cared for.” 

“I see,” Madame Thénardier said. She glanced around the flat with new interest, as if tallying up to see which of their furnishings added up to eighty francs. “Yes, I see. How old were they again?”

“The older just three, the younger almost one,” Magnon said. 

“What a strange coincidence,” Madame Thénardier said. Then she said, “Do you want mine?” 

*

She liked the new set better. They didn’t look like Gillenormands. She and Anna moved house to conceal the swap, and Magnon found that it was easy to treat them somewhat kindly. Their reddish hair reminded her of Anna’s. 

The side effect was becoming more closely entwined with the Thénardiers, which either she nor Anna particularly wanted. Magnon found herself filling a more permanent position of go-between, particularly when various members of their gang were in prison. But as long as she paid them on time, she figured, it would be easy enough to keep them at arm’s length when needed. 

And it was needed, to a certain extent, in time. They had money enough for a nice flat, for nice clothes. Monsieur Gillenormand visited and didn’t notice the difference in the children, but it was important to keep up an appearance he would approve of. And Magnon found that she rather liked those standards, too. People in the neighborhood thought them genteel ladies, with pretty little boys. 

“You dote on them,” Anna said one day, when the boys were a little older.

“I have nothing else to do all day,” Magnon said, a little defensive. But she had to admit that maybe she did. She knew, even so, that were it someday to come to a choice between the boys and Anna—she didn’t know what it said about her, as a person, as a woman, as a mother, that she knew without question which one she would choose. 

*

The Thénardiers’ older daughter came slinking by one day. This was years later—not _so_ many, but time enough for boys to grow: Magnon’s boys were walking and talking and the older even seemed like a whole little person, with fixed opinions and habits of his very own. Montparnasse, the Thénardier girl’s shadow, had shot up like the knife blade he always kept close to hand. 

“A message,” she said, thrusting it at Anna without meeting her eyes. She turned to scurry away, but Anna stopped her. That’s where Magnon found them when she got home from a walk with the boys, Anna and Eponine drinking tea, Montparnasse skulking in the corner.

“Why don’t you sit in a chair like a civilized person,” Magnon said. 

“Don’t want to,” Montparnasse said. “We’re not supposed to hang around, we’re just supposed to come and go.”

“Says who?” Magnon asked.

“Her father,” Montparnasse said, jerking his head towards Eponine. “He told us to hurry.” 

“You take your time,” Anna said. “It is rude to leave in the middle of tea.” 

“And rude to lurk in corners,” Magnon muttered as she sat down herself. 

“What do you do for your father?” Anna asked. 

Eponine, eyes down, fidgeted with the handle of her tea cup. She was bone thin and tangle-haired, and Magnon couldn’t tell her age at all. She wondered if she knew that the little boys in the next room were her brothers, what her mother had said happened to them. 

“This and that,” she said at last. Montparnasse snorted, and Anna’s eyes flicked to him. Only Magnon saw the way they flashed, just for an instant, icy cold—and then she was herself again, round-faced and blandly pleasant. 

“I ask,” she said, “because we have been looking for a girl to help around the house.” (Magnon, who knew by now how it sounded when Anna was spinning a scheme, knew better than to express her surprise at this new information.) “I just know you would be wonderful at it, once you had learned the way. Would you perhaps ask your father if he would be so kind as to let us borrow you a few days a week? For a wage, of course.” 

“What?” Montparnasse said. Eponine, on the other hand, looked startled, then suddenly pleased.

“I’ll ask him,” she said. “We haven’t got anything worth tidying up, but I know how to do it. I could do it.”

“I am very sure you can,” Anna said. “Ask him, do. And come back tomorrow and tell us what he says.” 

The next day, however, it was not Eponine who turned up on their doorstep, but her father. 

“I don’t meddle in your business, do I?” he asked without preamble.

“You do not,” Anna said, more politely than Magnon had been preparing to be. “You do your part and I will do mine. It is best that way.” 

“I quite agree,” Thénardier said pleasantly. “So what the fuck are you doing meddling with my daughter?”

“Meddling?” Anna said. Her voice had gone cold. Magnon stepped forward, flushed with anger, but Anna put a hand on her shoulder and pushed her back. “I offered her work.” 

“She works for me,” he said. “And so I’d thank you to not go putting ideas in my daughter’s head. I don’t need her turning out like the likes of you.”

“The likes of us? Well-fed, well-dressed?” Anna said, suddenly angry. “Yes, God forbid! You would get more use out of her if she were like us than you do now. But never mind. We will keep away, if that is what you want.” 

“As long as you keep the fuck away from the boys,” Magnon snapped, unable to resist getting a word in. Thénardier laughed.

“Careful,” he said. “Don’t want them hearing that kind of language. Don’t want them knowing who you really are.” 

“We should cut ties with him,” Magnon fumed once he was gone. “Let him get arrested.”

“No,” Anna said. “Then what would happen to the boys? You think he would not go to your old man in revenge? No. We will just—” She waved a hand. “Do as he says. We cannot do otherwise. I would have helped her if I could, but— some men would rather have power over their women than anything else in the world.” 

“That,” Magnon said. “That is what I never wanted to be. I saw the way they pushed my aunt around, the things they’d say to her, the things they’d threaten to do to her—maybe they did do to her—” She broke off and shook her head. “We should have tried harder.” 

“We cannot kidnap her,” Anna said. “If her father will not let her go, or if she will not defy him and come anyway, then there is nothing more we can do. I think he is not a man to lightly make an enemy of.” 

Magnon hated to agree. It seemed to her she should be braver than that, should be the kind of person willing to risk herself to save someone else from the fate she had so feared. 

But, she found, she wasn’t. 

“The boys won’t grow to be that way,” Magnon said. “They will be gentlemen, and they will act it.”

“Yes,” Anna agreed with a small smile. “They will have the leisure to grow up kind.” 

*

When the police came knocking at their door, Magnon’s first thought was to blame Thénardier. And indeed, she later learned it was in some respects his fault, he being the center from which the ripples of arrests had sprung—but he hadn’t reported them, hadn’t snitched on them. And thus lacking information, after only a few days, she and Anna were set free. 

Upon their release, Magnon went first to the cobbler across the street, who assured her that he had collected the boys from the yard where they had been playing when the police came, and had given them the message directing them to Monsieur Barge—who would, as Magnon had instructed him some time before, bring them in turn to Monsieur Gillenormand, offering some appropriate excuse for Magnon’s absence. One that did not involve being arrested. She sent Monsieur Barge a message, informing him that she was home.

She waited two days, three days, a week, and still there was no sign of the boys. Anna was tense and irritable all the while, which was so unlike her it only made Magnon more anxious. When they at last devolved into a screaming fight over a cracked teacup, Magnon seized Anna’s hands and dragged her over to the bed and sat them both down on it. Anna buried her face against Magnon’s shoulder, and Magnon stroked her hair, both murmuring apologies. 

“What’s the matter?” Magnon asked. “You’ve been so strange.” 

Anna sat up, but it took her a moment to muster the will to meet Magnon’s eye. “I think we must leave.” 

Magnon blinked. “Leave?”

“Take a new house, in a new part of town,” Anna said. “Build up new associates. This escape was too narrow.” 

“But…” Magnon glanced at the door, as if the boys might step through any minute. 

“I know,” Anna said. “That is why I have not asked. But I—you must do whatever you must do. But I cannot wait any longer.” 

“Oh,” Magnon said.

A long silence spread out between them, one that at last Anna felt compelled to try and fill: “This is the reason I have not been arrested, why I am not in jail or a colony,” she said. “I know the time to get away. Now is the time. For me. But you should stay, if you want to. Go ask the old monsieur for the boys, live respectably with them somewhere.” 

And here it was, Magnon thought. Everything she had always wanted—a respectable life, money enough, fine clothes and a fine house, no master to answer to, a room of her own, neighbors who smiled at her, a small family even, to be free from a life of crime and lies and sordidness—set in the scale against—

“Anna,” she said. “You know I can’t live without you.” 

Anna’s round, English face expressed a sort of pained hope. “So…?” 

“So I will tell Monsieur Barge he need not pass on any messages—that if Monsieur Gillenormand comes looking, he should be told the boys may remain with him.” What sort of men would they become, raised by that old man? She would never know now, and maybe that would be better. 

Anna seized Magnon’s hands, then leaned in and kissed her, hard. 

“What a new life we will have,” she said. “You will see.”


End file.
